“All right,” he said quietly. Taking my hand, he pulled me from the ballroom, stopping for my coat. His driver collected us at the curb.
The streets of London seemed darker than usual. The rain had stopped, and the clouds had lifted. The night was frosty and soundless.
We walked into his dark, silent house after he punched in the alarm code. I started to go up the stairs. He stopped me.
“I never told you,” he said huskily, pulling me into his arms, “how beautiful you looked tonight.”
My heart went faster. “I did?”
“The most beautiful woman there by far.” Pulling me closer, he twirled a long tendril of my hair around his finger and murmured, “I was glad when you left to get a drink, because the other men were flirting with you so indecently I thought I’d have to punch them.”
“They were flirting with me?” I said dumbly. I had no memory of any of this alleged flirting, or of any of the men who’d surrounded us. I just remembered clinging to Edward’s arm like a silent idiot.
“Any man would want you.” His hand traced up my shoulder, my neck. “You’re the most desirable woman I’ve ever known.”
“More than the woman you loved in Spain?” I heard myself blurt out.
His hand grew still. His ice-blue eyes met mine. “Why do you say that?”
I swallowed. But I couldn’t back down now. “Victoria told me you took care of her for a year, helping her when she was pregnant. After she married someone else, you still loved her. You wouldn’t let her go. You were willing to die for her.” I stopped.
“So?” He spoke without apology, and without explanation. As if he owed me neither. It made my heart turn to glass.
I took a deep breath. “Is it true she looked like me?”
His dark eyebrows lowered. “Victoria said that?”
“Yes.”
“She was guessing.” His lips creased in a humorless smile. “She never met Lena. But it happens she’s wrong. You look nothing alike.”
I exhaled. Then I shivered. Lena. So that was the other woman’s name. “What made you love her so much?”
His eyes narrowed. “Why do you keep pushing?”
“Because I...”
I froze.
Because I wanted to know what special quality this woman had had, that had made Edward love her so much, when he couldn’t even love me a little. Had she been pretty? Had she been wise? Was it the sound of her voice or the scent of her perfume?
I wanted to know because at my deepest core, I yearned for him to love me the same way. I yearned for him to want to be with me. To stay with me. Raise a child with me.
I was in love with him, and wanted him to love me back.
My infatuation with Jason had been nothing, a schoolgirl crush, compared to what I felt for Edward, the man I’d healed, the man I’d shared a home with, the man who’d teased me and encouraged me and demanded I follow my dreams. The man who’d taken my virginity and shown me what physical love could be. The man whose child I now carried deep inside me.
I was in love with Edward.
Desperately.
Stupidly.
“Diana?”
I took a deep breath. “I was just curious, that’s all.” I gave him a weak smile. “After hearing Victoria talk about her. What made Lena so different?”
“Different?” Moonlight from the window caught the edge of his face, leaving his eyes in shadow. “Lena wasn’t different. She was ordinary, really. But she acted helpless, as if I were the only one who could save her. She made me think...I could be her hero.” His cruel, sensual lips twisted up at the edges. “Me. Isn’t that hilarious? But I almost believed it. I took care of her for months, asking nothing in return. Until she suddenly left me for the Spanish bastard who’d abandoned and betrayed her.”
“That’s it? She acted helpless?” I could be helpless, I thought wildly. I felt helpless right now, looking at him, fearing there was nothing I could do to make him love me or want our baby.
He shrugged. “I thought I deserved her. That I’d earned her.”
I blinked. “You can’t earn someone’s love. That’s not how it works.”
He gave a harsh laugh. “I’ve heard the words I love you from so many women...”
“You have?” I whispered. No one had ever spoken those words to me, except for my family.
“...but words are meaningless. Cheap. Women have said it after they’ve only known me a few hours—in bed. They barely knew me at all. They were just trying to trap me, to make me do something I didn’t want to do. To own me.”
“You mean, make you commit?”
“Exactly.” He gave me a crooked grin, then looked away. “But I always imagined love to be an action, not a word. If I loved someone, I wouldn’t say it, I’d show it. I’d take care of her, putting her needs ahead of my own. I’d put my whole soul into making her happy....” He cut himself off with a harsh laugh, clawing back his hair. “But what the hell do I know? I’ve never found love like that. So I gave up on it. And I’ve been happier ever since.”
“I don’t believe that,” I said softly, looking at the stark emotion in his eyes. “I’m sorry that woman hurt you, but you can’t live the rest of your life closed off from love.”
“You’re wrong,” he said flatly.
Clutching my hands into fists at my sides, I whispered, “Do you still love her?”
He choked out a laugh. “Love her? No. It all seems a million years ago. I was a different person then. I’m leaving them to it. The Duke and Duchess of Alzacar are happy together, with their fat, happy baby, happily married in their big castle in happy, happy Spain. I wish them every happiness.”
His voice had an edge to it. A darkness. I searched his handsome face. “You’re sorry you tried to kidnap her...Aren’t you?”
“I’m sorry I ever let myself care in the first place,” he said coldly. “I should have known better than to think I could be any woman’s hero. It’s not in my nature. Now...I know who I am. Selfish to the core. And glad. My life is completely within my control.”
Looking up at him, my glass heart broke into a thousand shards, each of them sharp as ice. “So you’ll never have a wife—no child—no family of any kind?”
“I told you from the beginning,” he said harshly. “Those are things I do not want. Not now. Not ever.” With a deep breath, he took a step toward me. Gently, he cupped my cheek with his hand. “But I do want this. You. We can enjoy each other. For as long as the pleasure lasts.”
His palm was warm and rough against my cheek, and I suddenly felt like crying. “It could be more. You have to know—”
He was already shaking his head grimly. “Don’t do this to me, Diana. Let this be enough. Don’t ask for more than I can give. Please. I’m not ready to let you go. Not yet—”
Pulling me tight against his hard-muscled body, he kissed me passionately in the shadowy stairwell of the Kensington townhouse.
I knew I should stop him, to force him to listen, to tell him the two things that were causing such anguish—joy, terror, desperate hope—in my heart.